The Uniform Makes for Brotherhood
by Thyme In Her Eyes
Summary: The Lieutenant quietly observes Amon with a newly-captured Tarrlok, and knows when something doesn't add up. Contains shades of (unrequited) Lieumon.


The Uniform Makes for Brotherhood

by Thyme In Her Eyes

_Author's Note:_ I'm back! And with my first foray into the _Korra _fandom too (and just to disclaim – no, I don't own it and make no profit from this, more's the pity), so I hope you all like it. It's set after _Out of the Past_ up until _Endgame_ – since I noticed the Lieutenant actually got a reaction shot during the rally scene when Korra revealed that Amon and Tarrlok were brothers, it made me wonder if maybe he'd noticed some things that didn't add up before that point. And a plotbunny was born. As ever, feedback is appreciated. Also, many thanks to TheMadPuppy for being such a patient beta!

_Warnings:_ Rated for language. Contains shades of (unrequited) Lieumon.

* * *

Years ago, when I was just a kid, back when I was still too young to understand why benders would always have things easier, like the world was made only for them, and how nothing came easier than trampling down those less blessed, I used to imagine what it would be like if only I could bend earth; the element of my grandparents. It wasn't about the power or the strength or even about my family – the thing that fascinated me back then was the _awareness_. What must it feel like, my dumb and desperate kid self would wonder, if I could have that sensitivity to even the vibrations under my feet, just like the most gifted earthbenders in all the best stories. Nothing would catch me off-guard then.

What I'm feeling now has to be some twisted and rotten version of that, some shadow in my blood. It must be something like the sick turning of my stomach, to feel things subtly shifting around you and beneath you. That's what this is – to feel the ground crumbling, an axis turning, courses changing, a balance altering. This has to be what it really means to sense movements beyond your vision.

_Something's not right here. Something's not right._

If only I could understand what those shifting movements are telling me.

* * *

It all starts with Councilman Tarrlok, on the night Amon equalises him.

At first, I don't notice. I'm too distracted at the time, and with the memory of it long after, by my own face slamming into the cabin's wooden floor harder than a sucker punch as I try to fight back against the invisible grip holding me.

"_You fool! You've never faced bending like mine!"_

I don't want to hear, but I can't stop myself from listening, and my ears fill with the creaking and grinding of the other chi-blockers' limbs, and the groaning and heaving noises they make as they grasp for control. I'm probably making similar sounds myself and choking on them. And then I don't hear anymore, don't see, don't breathe, don't think – _I can't_. There's nothing except this unbearable black gravity working at my insides. It drags and twists me onto my knees, onto my stomach, and I have to follow – if I don't, the pull's going to tear me open and my body knows it.

I can sense our weapons scattered across the floor, my own just inches away from my fingertips, but they might as well be back in Republic City for how impossible that distance feels. And this is what it's all about; this is _bending_ in every sense of the word, the true nature of what our society calls a great gift. It's something to make others bend, and it's pressing and pressing on me without mercy. This bloodbending, this display, it's everything – _everything_ – that I've hated and given my life to stand against and see erased from the world, and it still pushes me down, strangles my resistance, and effortlessly turns years of training and combat into just another sack of liquid to manipulate. The harder I struggle to ball my hands into fists and force my way up from the floor, the worse I can feel my own blood being turned against me. The grip tightens and twists my body, crushing my bones from the inside, and it leaves me limp as a broken marionette and panting with helpless rage and disgust, with no choice but to sweat and shudder in agony. It's all I can do.

And then Amon strides past me, still strong on his feet from what has to be force of will alone; barely faltering under the grip of that bending vice for more than a second or two. I can't move, can't lift my head or do so much as tilt it without Tarrlok's permission, so I don't see what exactly happens when the moment comes; when Amon confronts the crazy bloodbender head-on. But I don't need to see it because, oh spirits, I _hear_ it. It's the same almost every time. The outrage, the confusion, then denial, and then finally fear. That sound, this time more than any other, is almost as sweet as the relief that comes when the crushing pressure on my limbs suddenly dissolves into nothing, the strength roaring back into my muscles, and my body becomes my own. I'm myself again and not some bloodbender's tool.

There's no way to describe what I feel towards Amon except amazement and a total lack of surprise, side by side.

That's nothing new. Neither, aggravatingly, is the sight of the Avatar gaining the upper hand and slipping away, no matter how disadvantaged she looks.

The truck's gotta be halfway back to the base before it registers with me that we haven't just taken Tarrlok as our prisoner, rather than leave his pathetic shell for the cops or the Avatar's flunkies to find, but that _Amon_ took him. Personally. That he chose to prioritise hauling away an unconscious ex-bloodbender alone over dealing with the very conscious and very pissed Avatar trapped below.

It rings out in my head like a dissonant note.

Days pass before I think back on this night again and realise I've got no idea how Amon could've known there was a seven-foot metal box hidden in the cabin's basement in the first place.

The note starts screaming.

* * *

Amon orders that Tarrlok be kept not just in his own cell, but in his own block, in total isolation from the other prisoners. The bastard deserves no better as far as I'm concerned, but as much as I hope that he rots away in there, I can't help but notice how the security on that cell is tighter than it needs to be. Amon handpicks a pair of chi-blockers to keep an eye on him, even though I doubt that anyone's planning to come and rescue the ex-councilman at this point. No matter how high his status used to be, it's all gone now, and half by his own hand from what I hear.

_Crazed bloodbender attacks his own._ It'll be all over the headlines tomorrow morning.

Still, the weird, unwelcome thought tugs at my brain. Whenever we captured benders in the past, almost always Triad scum or Beifong's metalbending cops, it was always to bring them _to _Amon, to have them equalised later. So it has to be to do with his position on the city council then, and the information we can pull from him. There has to be a reason. Amon always has his reasons.

"There will be a trial, of course," he tells me later, neatly offering an explanation and answering my questions before they even leave my mouth.

I bite back a grin of satisfaction. It fits, it all fits together, and a part of me has been waiting what feels like a lifetime to hear these words. To arrive at this moment.

He smoothly paces the control room; arms folded securely behind his back as always, and regards a map of the city. "To lose their bending is not a true punishment, and there are some who will never accept a society of equals. As soon as Republic City is ours, all former benders known to have abused their powers in order to commit crimes against the non-bending population will be brought to trial for it. So I plan to hold onto our good councilman until that day comes."

"He's going to be the first?" _Where do I reserve my seat?_

A sudden pause, like he can hear my dumb thoughts.

"Tarrlok is a bloodbender and the creator of unjust laws, an oppressor of those who were reliant on him. But no, he's not going to be the first." Amon answers, deep and final. "That fate is reserved for the Avatar."

This is the only balm there is after getting beaten up so soundly by that damn girl so often, to know that she's only brought herself pathetic scraps of time. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that when the moment finally comes, Amon is going to deal with her just as quickly as he did Tarrlok.

"Until then," he resumes, almost like an afterthought – except that Amon never has afterthoughts, only plans already fully measured out, "I want him treated well. His conditions are to be comfortable, within reason, and he'll be fed regularly. Decent food. I will personally interrogate him later – when I do, under no circumstances will anyone interrupt me."

Ouch. Poor Tarrlok. Poor fucking Tarrlok _who deserves everything he gets and more._

"Understood, Amon."

He gives me a brief, grave nod, and I know this little discussion of ours is over, but I have to offer up something more to him.

"Our agents in city hall have their hands full after what he did there. They say he's Yakone's son."

"They're correct."

Just like that, not a beat missed. It's eerie sometimes, how good his Intel can be, and I'm the one still shuddering inwardly at hearing the sound of that damn _name_ again after all these years, hating to say it out loud. It dirties the air.

I let out a frustrated growl of a sigh. "All the more reason for a trial, then. The world's gonna want his head."

His masked face turns towards me, and there's sharpness to that usual casual grace of his now, like he just realised I'm here in the room with him and not some voice in his mind. I'm not supposed to see or hear this, I think. It's not meant for me. Something inside me whispers, _he's distracted_, and straight away I want to hide that idea, kill it, bury it. I can't see a hint of his eyes behind that mask right now, just black hollows staring at me from the white and red surface, and I'm suddenly thinking of cold sweat.

Amon turns away again, as if turning over ideas of his own in his hands. When he speaks, it's in a quieter tone than what I'm used to. "Have you recovered from what he did to you?"

Damn it. This is the kind of moment I live for, the moments that reduce me to strange shyness, when the balance between us shifts and his concern turns personal. But I can't savour anything about it, and for the second time in one night, I get the twisting feeling that something here doesn't add up right.

The pain of being bloodbended by Tarrlok teases at my limbs and memory again, as does the pride and admiration that rushed through me when Amon brought it to an end, and I want to stifle my questions more than ever. I know where my loyalties lie – where they'll always lie.

"Yeah, like it never happened. Thank you." _For saving my ass back there, for everything you've ever done. _I pull at my left shoulder for effect and roll it under my hand, hating my own nervous chuckle at the reminiscence. "Hurt like hell, though."

"Yes," he replies; soft and thoughtful, almost lost. His resonance makes the room dark. "It did."

His hands are clenching and wringing at each other so tightly and fiercely that it must be painful.

* * *

Before I'm done with breakfast, I hear talk that Amon has paid Tarrlok a visit already. Alone, in the pre-dawn hours. He brought food with him. The words grind together.

Well, it sure wasn't a social call. I probably ought to feel sorry for the poor bloodbending bastard for coming to Amon's attention this way – for having such a sorry mix of civil authority, government information, value as a hostage, guilt of bloodbending crimes, a family connection to Yakone, and plain miserable luck. I really would pity him, if I were a better man.

I can't say what vicious spirit possesses me when I start nosing into it, or what I'm even expecting to find. Amon is the one the spirits have chosen – he shares his decisions with us when he knows the time is right and we don't intrude before that time, and that's always been our way, but some itching part of me needs to know what exactly went down. Maybe because I see the father in the son – that _shadow_ who used to rule this city from inside its own guts, the shadow that stood over my parents, my childhood, and that stands today in Tarrlok. All he did was shave the serial numbers off.

I wonder what Amon did with him. What he asked, and how. All there is to know, and what we'll do with it. How he pulled out whatever information he wanted, as easily and bloodlessly as he pulled out his bending the night before.

The guards are dismissed from the cell door, almost banished. The one absolute order is that no-one interrupt him. When it's finally over, Amon walks out without a word and immediately retires to his room to meditate on the information given. His hands clasp at each other, let go, and then clasp again. The guards are commanded to resume their posts outside Tarrlok's cell, and no-one questions why.

For the entirety of the _visit_ nobody saw or heard anything strange, but when I pass by that lonely prison cell sometime later, I hear sounds – like wrenching, strangled sobs.

When Amon emerges from his meditation, he's an entirely new Amon to the one who exchanged quiet and lost words with me last night. The difference is an assault on my senses, almost like a loss.

"My brothers and sisters," he speaks, and every one of us listens. "Today, the revolution enters its endgame."

* * *

And endgame it is.

From the moment that word is spoken, everything escalates. Our plans accelerate for the second time since the Avatar first put in an appearance, and almost too fast to register this time, but there's no way we can be readier for what's coming. We train and we spy and we plan and we anticipate, and we sweat. Our underground factories never shut down and its workers never slow down; they just churn out one instrument of equality after another. Nobody rests, least of all Amon himself. Months of planning, attacks, and preparations get compressed into one day's action and the Equalists go from invading a pro-bending stadium and kidnapping a councilman to battling the United Forces and bombing the city. But it was always going to come to this. It was – this is efficiency, the strike to end all strikes.

This is war, and it's what I've spent my whole life waiting for.

This is war, and we win. We take it all. We take down the council, we take down city hall, we take down what's left of the cops, and we take down Air Temple Island, and the White Lotus members guarding it. We take down _Beifong_.

The only real drawback is that the Avatar and her pals slip away again, and all the airbenders too, and I'm left about a step away from hospitalisation after leading the charge, but it doesn't matter. They only got away because they ran, and they can't do that forever. As for me, I'm still whole and I'm still walking, and if I've got to give my blood for this, then I'll give it with no regrets. And I'm not out of action yet.

Our zeppelins rise and our cause rises with them, and Republic City falls to us like a stack of cards. Like it was waiting for us. I'd almost say that it's been too easy to feel sure about, but nothing can seem too easy; not when I glance over at Amon and see him working like one of Hiroshi Sato's machines. He's something else these days, something possessed. It's contained in the smallest signs, but it's as if there's this ruthless and restless feeling at work in him; a kind of pent-up energy raging to spend itself. Even his stillness and silences are different now – it's in the rigidity of his frame, and the tautness and tension to his shoulders and back.

Watching him like this brings back uncomfortable memories of when I was a kid, sneaking into those travelling puppet shows from the Fire Nation that came by the city every year, and how I felt when I finally crept close enough to see the strings holding the dolls up and pulling them along. It makes me wonder how I never saw it before.

* * *

When Amon chooses Air Temple Island as our new headquarters, it feels right. Taking it and making it ours feels like coming home, like this place _should_ belong to us; the invisible people left aside and trampled down by Avatar Aang's glorious legacy of bringing a second's peace between benders and his great achievements in creating this city of power and corruption. The awe and reverence that so many used to feel for the previous Avatar rightly belongs to Amon now, and so should this. This is how satisfaction feels – to be part of the gradual conversion of Aang's isolated and self-applauding little temple into a militarised base and the nerve centre of the revolution, and to be able to watch the movement's hold stretch out from here like the strong, sure fingers of a powerful hand. It feels like reshaping the world and the future, and I wonder if this might be close to what Amon feels when he cleanses someone of their bending.

It all feels so right and ready, until I overhear the order to transfer ex-councilman Tarrlok, who I'd almost forgotten, to a cell created just for him in the tower attic.

I don't get it, and I say so. His involvement makes no sense to me, unless special treatment was what he bargained for – but I can't imagine part of that being the wish to be nearer to where Amon plans to be. This'll make him the only prisoner coming to the island with us who's already been equalised too. And I presume he's already given us all the information he's good for, whatever that was.

"Do we still need him?" I can't keep the mild confusion from my voice, fighting faith. "Beifong's our biggest escape risk; there's no fight left in him from what the guards report."

"Why should he need to fight us?"

I can hear the edge of a smile in his tone, but I don't have a clue if it's for me or for himself and whatever he's reflecting on.

It's the hope for an answer that causes me to stand by Amon when he takes charge of part of the transfer personally. I'm waiting for Tarrlok to say something that'll make this add up in my head, or that I see something that makes it obvious what use the bloodbending scum still has to us.

What happens is strange. There's something bizarre about watching these two figures near to one another this time, interacting with barely a word spoken – this distance, this intimacy. I can't pin it down. Amon is the only one to enter the cell, and from what I see at some length away, he opens the barred door to Tarrlok – who, against my reckoning, doesn't try anything stupid, doesn't even shift from his slumped sitting position or lift his head to look directly at Amon – and gets close, crouches low at Tarrlok's level, and leans in. I know this stance, I've seen it used on the Avatar before now, and even though Amon is poised to attack, I feel like this is the most relaxed and natural I've ever seen him.

Amon says something to him, too soft for me to understand.

And then a half-second later, he straightens and before I fully register his hand moving, he delivers a sharp, precise blow to the pressure-point at the junction between Tarrlok's collarbone and neck, instantly and impersonally knocking him out. No hint of personal anger and no sadism involved.

Tarrlok's frame slackens and slumps forward and Amon reaches out, hands catching him at the shoulders and keeping him from falling face-first onto the floor. Huh. He looks more like a saviour than a jailer.

Is it me, or for a split second does his thumb brush over the point where he struck hard enough to bruise?

"This one is important," he says, all gravel and warning, as he carefully hands over the unconscious body to a group of chi-blockers preparing to descend to the island. His hold lingers a fraction longer than it strictly has to. "Be careful with him."

* * *

The base is fully secured and our units are mobilised to continue our advance into the city, and all promises are made good on sooner and more completely than we could have imagined. More than ever before, Amon works like an inhuman being; like the spirit incarnate some of our old betting pools used to insist he really was.

All of our bender prisoners – and a part of me stores away the uncomfortable knowledge that for the first time we have a number of non-bender prisoners, and that number is growing – are lined up in the open for a mass-equalisation, on Amon's orders. I don't need to be here for this, and to be honest, my legs still ache brutally from my run-in with the Avatar and from a general need for rest after all my body's had to take lately – but spirits, I want to be here. I have to be, for myself. I'm so ready to take this in, to watch this sight, to breathe this night's air, to stand by Amon at this moment. To see bender after bender after bender purified, made into us. And to personally haul every worthless bender to their rightful place at Amon's feet, to watch them cower under his shadow. This is what I've waited and fought and bled for – what we all have. This is equality, and this is justice.

They don't beg or bargain, not like the Triads did. They don't get offered a chance to keep their bending.

Amon is as relentless as he is indiscriminate. Prisoner after prisoner get set down before him and cleansed, and then moved along like a living and breathing part of a factory production line, and through it all he shows no sign of slowing or tiring. No sign of anything really, except for that cold satisfaction I know so well, but there's a trace of something else there too. Something different, driven. The way he moves, the way he processes them – it's somehow both mechanical and yet human, greedy for more. It's exhausting just to watch him. The hours flow by and I glance down the long line of subdued benders helpless to do anything but wait for their turn, and it stretches beyond my vision, snaking across the island like a scar, and that's when I understand that Amon really does plan on dealing with every single one of them before he'll consider stopping. The night darkens and deepens.

A long while passes before my body completely catches up with me and I finally feel my tiredness. The thrill and triumph eventually fade, and all that's left is an old bone-weariness, legs that hurt and complain, and a head dizzy with sleep. I feel it, and that's what tells me Amon doesn't.

I'm free to go any time, and I could call for anyone to take over my role. I don't even think he'd notice me leave at this point – and that's a ringing alarm in itself – but something still keeps me rooted and compels me to stay. I want to watch and be part of this more than I want rest, and I want to take my own place at Amon's side and see this through. But the more I see, the more my eyes follow him, and the worse I feel.

Everything's going according to plan and then some, but fuck, something's _wrong_ here – with Amon. I've never seen him off-balance before, I can barely picture it, but more and more it feels as if that's exactly what I'm looking at right now. This is chaos for him. This is all that bottled energy finding its release and refusing to be contained again. He's not so much a fast-flowing current tonight as a raging tide, forcing through the birth of the new world. He lets himself become immersed, he lets himself be hounded by some inner force, and I yearn to understand those demons and say they're the same as mine, but it's more than revenge, more than obsession. It's like there's this shard of icy desperation lodged in his chest that he can't burn away. The reserve and control are still there as always, but he's _straining_ under them right now, and the cold serenity is vanishing. It almost looks as if he's putting forth an actual effort to maintain it, like he's trying to hold onto something, or maybe trying to keep something at a distance.

_This isn't like him._ But then, a couple of things haven't been much like him lately.

The realization hits me hard – this is the same dissonance I felt a few nights ago, when he captured Tarrlok. It's just being channelled in the complete opposite direction.

I come close to calling it a night, and the shift of chi-blockers on security duty changes twice, but Amon won't stop flowing – he stands tall and upright and strong as ever, and motions for another bender and then the next, followed by the next. As long as there are benders left in line, he'll refuse to end this until they're all done. I know that feeling too well. The pit of my stomach knows it. I look at him and suddenly see myself nearly ten years ago, ruined by life and ready to destroy what was left of me; slumped at some nameless grimy bar with dim lights and a broken radio, downing one drink after another and not letting anyone stop me.

When it's finally over, it's Tarrlok's new cell that he heads towards, the same way I used to collapse into bed, into the gutter, into oblivion.

* * *

You can learn a lot about a man over a span of eight years. And in eight years, you can learn enough about Amon.

Before I was anything special for the Equalists, I trained as a chi-blocker just like everyone else, and the first thing they teach you before you can even start learning about the fancy moves or chakras is how to read the language of the human body. You're taught how to see straight through your enemy before the first move is made, to know if they're strong or weak, or tired or wounded, or if they're veterans or first-timers. It's important to be able to read a bender's stance, to know the familiar forms, how their weight shifts, the limbs held in readiness. You have to be able to see where the next strike is coming from and know the weak points your enemy wants to shield from you. And if you're up against especially skilled or powerful benders, then you need to be able to decode them fast and know if they're calm or conflicted, if they're in-control or terrified or raging. So many subtle cues can save your skin when you're just starting out, and they can turn the tide in your favour once you get strong and learn a trick or two about exploiting all those neat little cues.

All those years, I watched him. I carved him into me. I watched, and I still do, because I remember what it was like to crawl on my belly in the dark, to be nothing – to think I was nothing, and accept that, and accept everything that came with it too. That was a time when it was just a normal thing for me to be treated with contempt by bender gangs and thugs, or like a dead-weight charity case by officials, because I blamed and hated myself for not being born a bender as much as anyone else ever could. It wasn't that Amon and his cause saved me or that he gave me the will to live on, it was that he taught me something I'd forgotten a long time ago – that I was human. I mattered. He gave my anger back to me, and with it all the other emotions that had gone numb over a lifetime. What he offered me was this knowledge like steel: that I shouldn't be silent because I was so used to my words being ignored or turned against me, and that I shouldn't let myself become listless because I was used to my actions amounting to nothing except more trouble.

"_Your words are not meaningless and your actions are not weakness."_

The other debts, I can repay – and over the years, I know I have. But that one? Never.

Amon listened, Amon absorbed. Amon was courage and belief and inspiration and fire. And he gave what charitable hand-outs and pitying cops never could – he gave me a new life and a vision of a new world. I gave my devotion, my blood. My life, openly dedicated to him.

So yeah, I watch him when I can. I admire. I want to learn him, to know him, to understand him. I'm not ashamed of it; never was.

Sometimes I think he's my friend, or that he would be if only our lives were different from the ones we were given, but he's never in all these years been my _buddy_ or anyone else's. He's our leader first, our ideal, always a step outside of the ordinary, but I've been allowed to see him restless, tired, and even injured once or twice, and that's privilege enough. There's no-one that he holds truly close beyond that – my feeling is there's some intimate trust far too broken in him to ever allow it. I can understand how that happens to a man, and I never ask him more because I don't need to. The distance says enough. He doesn't ask me about my secrets either, or my past, or my demons. We talk business, even in private, and things like _I believe in you_ and _I would die for you_ go without saying.

Every piece of human substance comes from his little tics and mannerisms that take years to unlock and understand, but once you do, you never need words with him again. Like everyone, he has his moods; moods that not even a mask can hide, and it's always been a point of pride for me that I taught myself to recognise some over time. Like anger, sorrow, frustration, anticipation and righteous triumph. Like grief. And longing – that, more than anything else. And all of them muted and subtle, sometimes strangled. Again, I don't ask, I never ask about them, just like I'll never ask what or who he longs for so badly. There are some things I don't even want to ask. I just watch and learn the language of him. He was forged in fire, but to me Amon is far more like a cold and dark body of water, and given enough time, you can learn to read certain things in him – the ripples, the tides, the free fluidity, the frozen surfaces, the depths that'll drown you.

Those rare moments when someone or something hurls a rock into the pool, shattering the calm and disrupting everything.

Yeah, I can read him.

And I can read when something's off.

* * *

This is my life: the struggle to cement our hold over Republic City enough to begin forming the new Equalist government, and then the new world. Toppling the old regime while winning the hearts of the people. Meetings with Amon, with Hiroshi Sato. Public rallies. Arrests. Chasing the rumours of a young woman riding a polar bear-dog. Tracking down Tenzin and his airbending family. Quelling riots and hunting down the various pockets of rebellion, hoping to flush the Avatar out of one of them. Fighting and capturing the soldiers of the United Forces.

And then sending them all to Amon. And watching him labour hard enough to make a regular man collapse from exhaustion or implode from the stress.

It's concern that fixes my eyes to all his movements at first, then something uncomfortable. I keep telling myself that there's a simple explanation for this – he's taken the full burden of the revolution onto himself now that we're _so close_, and that he's been pushing himself to his physical and mental limits and taking minimal rest, and that's all there is to the changes in his behaviour. It's the wear and tear showing, in his own way. I order myself to do more, to fight harder, to become a more solid and reliable pillar of support to him. To not repeat past mistakes.

The unease grows like an itch. It keeps me up and my brain roams all over it, trying to reason it down to nothing. It's strange and painful to feel so torn between letting Amon see my worry for him and the sick suspicion that I badly need to hide how much I sense about him.

His visits to Tarrlok's cell continue as quiet and unannounced interludes now, a part of _his_ life that I don't understand, and I keep my eyes open for this one detail that doesn't fit in our picture of the new world. There can't possibly be any more useful information we can get out of that sham of a politician, and there's no way he didn't run out of words and promises long ago. Now I think about it, it was never clear what exactly Amon got from him in the first place. I remember Tarrlok as being smarter than a weasel-fox back in the days of his task force, but not smart enough to divulge small, measured doses of vital information weeks after the revolution takes place. Not smart enough to keep _Amon _dangling on a hook and coming back for more. So what does Amon get out of this? What the hell do they still have to speak about?

The trial? I never hear talk of that from Amon anymore – the plans are made, the figurative stage is set, and in a word a literal one would be good to go any time. We're all waiting, and I know that Sato is practically slobbering with how much he wants this, and for all benders to pay and keep on paying. But we can't take a single step forward.

Now isn't the time, Amon reminds me, with resistance against our ideals still too obstinate. And the Avatar has to be the first.

Yeah, and she's still at large; a pain in our collective ass at every turn. And even before her trial, she has to be the last bender in Republic City to know equalisation. So it seems like Tarrlok could be with us and sitting pretty in that cell for potentially a very long time.

The other captured council members get no such special attention. Something warns me to stop asking.

* * *

Amon's visits don't increase in frequency – they're sporadic things, like a twitch that seizes or a sudden pulse of emotion – but they last longer every time, and on his return, he always seems one step further away from us, off somewhere else. Even while outlining strategies, reading reports, giving speeches, and taking bending, and more than once I catch him deep in thought on something that can't be revealed to me. Especially on the nights when a rough, frigid wind blows in from the sea. And I start to hate that mask of his more than ever.

The number of guards posted outside the cell whittle down. The trail of potential witnesses and eavesdroppers thins out. At night, I see a lamplight burning from that highest tower. And I wish I could stop keeping track of this when it leaves me feeling so damn nervous, but I can't.

One evening, I happen to meet him on his way back down that isolated cell and to the control-room, and I'm stunned and amazed and pissing my pants all in the same moment, because Amon is actually _agitated_. There's a slight stoop to his shoulders, normally unforgivable to him. There's a hard determination to his steps too, like he wants to punish the ground under him. His arms are folded behind his back too stiffly, and I can see the tiniest of tremors in his hands. They curl lightly, as if wanting to ball into fists, but never give in to instinct and allow it. Tension, resistance – it's like mud clouding a clear pool. When I address him, he's gruff, distracted, abrupt. His voice is hoarse. Spirits, _I know this_ – this mood is temper, tightly leashed.

I hear from a guard later that Tarrlok isn't eating his meals anymore.

Amon stays away from that cell for days afterwards, but what spooks me more than the way he left it is that he eventually returns, like he has to. I watch it all while fighting a raised eyebrow, and just before he ascends the wooden staircase leading to that room, his hands clasp in front of his stomach for a second before resuming their proper place at his back. He lifts his chin, and I'm not sure, but I almost hear him take a breath. If I didn't know better, I'd say he looks contrite.

_Good thing I know better._

* * *

Amon brings Tarrlok all of his meals, and just like that, the visits become regular. I've long had this hunch that Amon handpicked everything that Tarrlok was to eat before now – as well as monitoring that it wasn't soiled, that it was cut into small pieces, and that no chopsticks were ever to be left in the cell afterwards – and thanks to this, it hardens into certainty. I never see Amon slip into the kitchens, of course, just like I never see him send a message into the city, and just like I never see him instructing anyone to cook anything or to buy anything for the prisoner. I never see anyone do so much as think about feeding Tarrlok, and I sure as hell never see Amon heading towards his cell with food in his hands or carrying an empty bowl on his way back. And yet, somehow Tarrlok is always fed and kept well, and Amon's prickling irritation fades, and no matter how many people I ask, no-one can take credit for the good deeds. Food just mysteriously appears in front of the ex-councilman and fills his belly, apparently.

Some protective spirit is looking out for him, and I know its name.

How he finds the spare moments, I don't learn for sure, but the time usually reserved for his rest and contemplation keeps shrinking. Nobody else notices or asks questions because they're too swept-up in the revolution to remember that Tarrlok even exists, and I reckon this is just what Amon wants.

On impulse, I leaf through an old file of ours on Tarrlok and the other former council members, back when we used to keep detailed tabs on all of them and their various dealings. The largest reports were always on Tarrlok, our most active opponent, even before he put his task force together. The information gathered here is extensive and holds all the comings-and-goings of his days. Where he'd go, who he'd meet, for how long, and – where possible – for what purpose. His connections, the personal as well as the political. His hobbies, his vanities, his bad habits. His waterbending training routine, always early in the morning or late at night. There's a life here, in these pages. A furiously active and pitifully lonely life, and suddenly I'm drawing parallels I'd really rather not.

There's a list of all his preferred restaurants here too, and for each one of them, a list of his favourite dishes.

* * *

I pretend not to see. To be truthful, I never want to see. By this point, I don't think anyone would know about Amon's visits – now so private and unspoken that it'd be easier to track the shadows slipping into that cell at night – if I didn't keep such a stubborn watch, and if my fool gut didn't force me into it.

He keeps his secrets so well. And this…_this is a secret_, I'm starting to think. Something personal, held so close to his chest that it tears into his heart.

Not that I have half a clue what it means yet, or any guess of what exactly Tarrlok is to him. So many of us have ugly history with Yakone and the Red Monsoons, that I could understand getting caught in the undertow caused by his son as easy as I understand my own dreams, but Amon's past is nothing to do with that. Us Equalists born and bred in Republic City all want a piece of that monster's cursed son, but that's my province, not his. Amon's always been above such things.

When I try to figure out what Amon finds so fascinating about him, and I think about that smug grin from the newspapers, I want to cringe.

A rotten splinter of jealousy festers inside me at the thought of that pathetic man, that snake-rat, that ex-bloodbender, that…_Tarrlok_, that preening slime, out of everyone, that he should be given so much of Amon's time and attention without cause. And I want to be blind as everyone else. If Amon has gotten himself a hobby, a pet, a favourite, a _whatever_, then good for him. We all deserve some relief and entertainment now and then, and he's more than entitled to his share. Let him have it, and let me not see and sweat over it any more. I'd prefer that, I'd take the sleaziest gossip anyone can think up over these quiet, secret and absolutely terrifying acts of kindness.

Amon has never led us astray before. The spirits chose him, they speak only to him. He's won my trust and loyalty a thousand times over. But I guess it turns out that my trust is broken and useless too, that some part of me never left those filthy city streets – this is the other side to remembering being nothing, being maddened by hunger and grief and bitterness. You never fully believe that you won't ever find yourself back there one day.

As much as I want to keep hoping that this is all part of some cruel game and that Amon always took Tarrlok with us just to publicly string him up later – broken, powerless, helpless – for the whole city to see, that doesn't seem to be the plan. For the first time, I don't know what the plan is.

* * *

We finally have the airbenders. We have all five members of the city council at our mercy, ready to face up to their crimes against us.

But we don't mention the trial any more. There's something else brewing now, a special rally Amon wants us working on, and it has to be ready. Two days from now, he's going to equalise Tenzin and his children in front of our biggest audience so far, and rid the world of airbending forever – right before our eyes.

"Their family will become the first nation of the new world, entirely in itself." His voice lifts us all to visions of that world with its sheer power, its dark promise.

My chest swells and under my goggles, I know my eyes are shining, and the old thrill shivers back to life at his words.

Tarrlok's name isn't mentioned once.

Amon keeps him safe.

* * *

When the night comes and it's high time to get some rest, I slip away and start making my way up to Tarrlok's cell. Only when I know Amon isn't anywhere around, of course, and that he won't be for a long time. This investigation, this _pull_ the truth has on me, it might be making me stupid, but not so stupid that I'd ever think of trying to sneak up on him, much less spy on him. Just the idea of it feels like blasphemy. I just follow the path of his footsteps, up the winding stairs, past where the guards used to be; not knowing what I want to find. I want…I just want to wring an answer out of Tarrlok for all of this. I know it's impossible while he's under Amon's protection – and if anyone remembers Tarrlok now, they say _custody_, but I know protectiveness, I've seen it – and I want to know why.

I creep to the top of the stair soft as I can, and I reach the heavy panel that opens up to the attic, suddenly guilty. I feel like an intruder, an invader, an _unbeliever _for coming so far. The sensation that some part of Amon is still guarding this place suddenly grips me, and I can't escape it. I touch the wooden panel and my strength drains from my hands.

I want to see for myself what's going on here, just to catch a glimpse of him as if it'll solve anything, but there's no way to just open some iron slats and peer in through a door, like the cells back at our old base. It's not possible to look in on Tarrlok without actually entering the room, or letting him know that someone other than Amon tried to get in there – and I wonder, would he tell him? Is he hoping for a rescue or not? What's his angle in all this?

I'm about to turn back and leave when the silence breaks, and I hear it.

It's a voice coming from inside – Tarrlok's voice, or what sounds like it. My heart shudders and my blood freezes for an awful second of panic, when I think that Amon must be in there after all, and then I remember he can't be. And there's no other sounds disturbing the air tonight – Tarrlok is alone.

Alone, and singing. It's hard to grasp the idea enough to understand what exactly I'm hearing, to think of him doing something so human and as ordinary as sing to himself in a dark room on a cold night. It embarrasses me to listen to him, but I don't turn away. It's some gentle, lonely tune, full of stops and starts. I barely catch it, the sound being so hushed and muffled, and the song being so frail and joyless; more like the memory of a song than the real thing. His voice is thick and cracks when the song should fly high, and it shakes so much. I don't recognise the melody and can't make out the words well enough, but it sounds like some old Water Tribe lullaby, sung between broken sobs.

_Shit, what am I doing?_

I get out of there fast and burned, careless about stumbling and being heard. And Tarrlok undoes all those years of training _again_ because I'm too much of a coward to stop him, to break in there and confront him, and taunt his pathetic misery until he never makes another sound for the rest of his days. I just keep shuffling away, trying to outrun everything I just heard, the thought of that stupid song, and my own damned sympathy.

* * *

There's a line between belief in the cause and belief in the man, and for me that line blurred a long time ago. Or maybe they were always two parts of the same whole.

All I can say for sure is that even though I'd felt the sting of oppression my entire life, when this all began I didn't really join the Equalists back then. I joined Amon. I'd follow him into the deepest and darkest depths of the Spirit World if I had to. And he knows it – and I want him to, I always wanted him to. If there are pieces of him that I can read, then I don't doubt that the whole of me must be totally, pathetically transparent to him. Every look of mine, every word, every movement, they all betray how much I feel, but I don't care. I stopped caring long ago.

I never felt a difference before now between loyalty to the movement and to Amon. They were the same. But now I feel like a fraud.

* * *

I listen again, the next night.

The rally's going to take place tomorrow. We've set up and prepared, and Amon's been working like a madman over the details, and at last everything's ready. We're all ready. Tomorrow, Amon is going to change the world forever.

But for this hour, he's nowhere to be found. And I should be sleeping, but instead I'm climbing again.

As I draw close, I hear Tarrlok's voice again before I'm even at the last flight of stairs, and it's not soft and singing this time, but loud and outraged. "I've only _ever_ wanted to save this city!"

And then there's another sound, too level for to make out at this distance. Another voice, calm and controlled. A voice I know.

Instantly, I know I should get the hell out. This curiosity's gotta be a curse from the spirits, and you think I'd learn my damn lesson by now. Whatever's going on inside that cell isn't meant for my ears – so why stay, when everything I've been noticing so far only poisons things and turns all our victories sour in my head? It's unthinkable to stay put and listen in – this is profane, and it's ridiculous to imagine he won't know about it. He always knows. No-one gets the better of Amon like this. But then, I never got anywhere in my life without being daring and learning to take a few risks. The blood pounds in my skull and drowns out everything else as I make my choice. Then I tread closer to the wooden hatch, and I listen.

There's wild hope flaring up in me too at the tone Tarrlok's taking – so hounded, so accused. Maybe I was wrong earlier to be so uneasy. Perhaps I lacked faith and misinterpreted things. This is going to be a bitter confrontation between enemies. It'll clear everything up.

I miss the next few pieces of the exchange as I make my way nearer, now that Tarrlok's voice isn't carrying anymore, but when I hear again, it's still Tarrlok and he's still disgusted.

"How can you even think about it? They're _children_."

"I think about it as cutting out a sickness." The reply comes and it's Amon, no question. "It has to be done. A bender's youth or good intentions mean nothing. As long as the power exists, all people will inevitably abuse it."

"If that's what you believe, then you're a hypocrite."

"Because it twists our nature."

It's Amon, sure enough, but tonight he's not the same Amon as the one I know. I've heard words similar to these before, and it's only him who can make certainty and serenity and even regret sound so hard and dominating, so absolute. But for some reason, there's something easier in his voice, more clear and familiar and more natural than I've ever heard it.

I hear a sigh of resignation. "Believe what you want and do what you want, but does it have to be at this rally? Think about what it'll be like for them. Don't you remember what it was like to be afraid like that?"

"You're the only one who was too afraid." Before I can even digest my confusion or think _how dare he_, that answer comes, and there's no offence to it, just knowing contempt.

"Yes, and look where I am now. Look at all it did for me."

"This is different. Everything I've done is different." I hear footsteps above me, and then a decisive stop. "I'm not him."

"That doesn't matter. You'll hurt them."

"Don't say that."

I catch my breath. I can't believe it's _Amon_ who just made that reflexive, wounded sound – all at once, it's a growl, a flinch, and a warning.

"You'll traumatise them."

"Don't say that." The warning comes again, harder. Tarrlok obviously heeds it.

"Look, whatever you choose to do, at least have the decency to do it in private – it doesn't have to be in front of an audience!" He makes a noise of frustration. "Sweet Yue, think about it _politically_ at least. If nothing else, think of the sympathy you'll lose, the sympathy your ridiculous cause is going to lose. Do you want to run it into the ground? There'll be parents in that crowd, good ones, and children too. You realise that, right? And you don't have any worries about them seeing you in a different light if you do this in front of them?"

"Were there no children in the Dragon Flats?"

"This isn't the same thing at all. And _if you recall_, things didn't go well for me after that."

There's a pause, and when Tarrlok speaks again, he's so quiet and ashamed that I've got to strain just to hear him. "And I was wrong back then. What I did…I shouldn't have. I wasn't helping anyone but myself."

There's another long silence, too long, before I hear footsteps again, this time advancing to where the bars are. When I hear Amon's voice again, it's closer to the ground, like he might be crouching, and the fondness in it makes me want to die.

"You haven't changed."

A bitter laugh. "You're joking, right?"

"I'm not. All this time, and you really never changed."

That _voice_ – there's such an unbearable tenderness to it, and this soft awe and affection that I never imagined existed, or that he'd allow to exist in himself; not even in guilty dreams. I can almost picture the slight smile on his masked face, or feel his words like a caress. And it's all for him.

It hurts to hear it, and it hurts ten times more to listen to the long wordless emptiness that follows. The quiet intimacy that I just don't understand. It's worse than agony to not be able to see what's happening in there, to have to press so close to the wooden hatch that it's sure to leave a red print later, all the while straining for a break in the silence that never comes. I imagine them staring at each other, and I suddenly wonder if Amon is wearing his mask.

"Still a weakling, you mean?" Tarrlok asks. "And you're derailing the conversation."

And like that, the sacred moment just ends, the emotion cut off from it as easily as bending from a blocked chakra. I hear it now, the sounds of a man standing up and pacing away.

Amon chuckles mirthlessly and ignores the question. "Regardless, I didn't know I had such a devoted adviser. Or that you'd want my revolution to hold so badly."

"This isn't about your revolution! This is about you!"

There's another strangled, desperate sound, and then the heavy noise of weight shifting, of a man frantically stumbling to his feet, then heavy and uneven footsteps. I hear him practically throwing himself against the bars, and I nearly stumble backward from surprise.

"This is about you deciding to bind and gag three innocent children, and wanting to put them up on a stage and…and…" Another sound of anger and pain beyond articulation. "I just don't understand how you can do this, that you don't see who you're reflecting –"

"_Do you think those children have good lives?"_ Amon snaps coldly – and this is _rage_. "Do you think they know what happiness is? What choice is? Do you think they had any power to agree or disagree with the decisions their father made for them? They have spent their entire lives cloistered on this island, isolated from their own city, from the rest of humanity. They barely interact with anyone other than their parents and those fawning acolytes. Their ultimate purpose in life is to perpetuate their dying race, and everything they're given is just to further that purpose. All they study is their airbending and the history of a lost and irrelevant culture that they'll be expected to shoulder as adults. Do they attend a public school, Tarrlok? You'd know better than I do, I'm sure. Do they ever set foot off this island? Do they have any friends their own age? Do they interact with other children at all? Do they have anyone apart from their animals and each other?"

The pacing above my head turns erratic, full of sharp halts, and I listen to him; half-spellbound and half-horrified. There's so much hatred in him, anger so cold and demanding that it slices, and it's thrilling and terrible, but I don't see where it's directed. I only know I've never heard words like these from him before, or heard his voice waver like this, and it stops my breathing. From what I hear, it's completely stopped the prisoner in his tracks too.

"Tell me – what do they have?" He asks Tarrlok with something like desperation, like he truly needs an answer.

"I can't answer that for you." Tarrlok says at last, sulky and submissive. "We'd never understand."

Amon actually _laughs_ then, and it's a harsh, choked noise. I picture him clutching at his sides, holding himself together. "Then what chance do you honestly think they have at leading good lives? They're just another reflection of Avatar Aang's hypocrisy in building this temple, and all they've been given is isolation and ignorance."

"They're happy and normal. I've seen them."

His tone turns scathing. "Yes. They'll want for nothing, I'm sure, simply because they were born with the ability to bend air, and because an ancient concept of balance depends on their prosperity. Not every child gets such a chance in life."

"I know." I can't tell if that's despair or reassurance in Tarrlok's voice, but it's hard and calm and sad, and more human than I thought was possible for him. "Please, stop doing this."

"What do you think's going to become of those children when they're released into the real world after spending their entire childhood cut off from it?" Something wild severs his restraint then, just for an instant. "And you tell me that _I'm_ the one who can't see the parallels?"

There's a gasp and sudden movement, and then another agonising stretch of silence. Heavy breaths and expectation fill the air, and there's just _so much_ I can feel pouring from that room. I can almost feel Tarrlok trying to stay calm and quiet, trying to control the situation somehow, to direct it back from this place where they've found themselves. And I can feel Amon – can feel him trying to master himself, to cleanse himself of this bitter poison that's eating at him, working silently and frantically to fuse himself back together and seal shut whatever tore open just now.

He wins. I feel him pull away, draw himself together. Amon speaks first, and he's _Amon_ again – all control and banked fire and overwhelming command.

"Air was meant to be the element of freedom, but its purpose has been corrupted." The finality is unmistakable and uncompromising. "I'm salvaging what bending will only take away from them."

"Listen to me, _please_. For the – for the sake of the good years." The pleading ends, and something low and firm takes its place. "I've never been a friend to Tenzin and I've slung every bit of dirt I could find on him over the years, but the one thing I'll say to his credit is that the man is an excellent father. Those children are deeply loved and they're happy as they are. Don't destroy that."

"Their happiness comes at the expense of this city's non-bending children, and of their own futures. It isn't enough."

"But they love their bending –"

"They're _defined_ by their bending. It's all they know." And there's no room for sympathy in that lofty serenity – and no reason why there should be. "And when I remove it from them, they'll have to find another way to define themselves and other skills and qualities to found their identities on. Tarrlok, I'm going to set them free."

"Like you did with me."

"Yes."

I can hear Tarrlok give a thin, almost hysterical laugh. "And this is freedom?"

"This is me keeping you alive – don't forget that. The others would have you lined up against a wall, but I won't give you to them."

If Tarrlok has a reply for that, he doesn't say it out loud – or if he does, then it's spoken too softly to catch my hearing.

Amon sighs and suddenly drops the harshness from his voice, like he's grown tired of it. "You were destroying yourself. You needed me."

I don't know if the silence that comes after means acknowledgement or denial. It's not aggressive, that much I can tell, but it's heavy and hopeless. And it feels so wrong to have to hear Amon like this – sounding so wistful, so burdened with longing, and so distant from it all at the same time. It's full of something twisted and broken and hurt – full of something that _can_ be hurt. It tells me he's not really the master of himself; that something a long time suppressed is breaking loose.

When Tarrlok speaks at last, he sounds much the same, like he's staggering under regrets. They both do. Whatever their connection is, I can sense it leeching the fight and the anger out of the room, and leaving something far more quiet and devastating in its place.

"I never asked for a solution, you know. Or to be freed from my bending."

"You did once."

"No," and again, it's too fond, too brittle. "I only ever asked for one thing from you. I didn't get it."

"You'll have it now. I won't leave you."

A noise like a breath getting sucked in, like tears. "You must know that's no good to me the way I am now. If you want to do anything for me, then just…just leave Tenzin's children out of this. They don't have to be part of it."

"I can't. They _are_ a part of this: their birthright made sure of that."

"Then do what you will. But even if you win, you can't go on like this. Nothing about this situation is sustainable."

"You'll feel differently in time. You'll see." There's something in Amon that sounds like he's trying to console, but it falls flat and cold. And it sounds like a goodbye.

"_It's for your own good, boys. You'll thank me for this one day_." Tarrlok mimics another voice savagely, dripping with sarcasm, before despairing. "It was never for anybody's sake except his. You know that, you always did. You knew it before me, N–"

That does it, and I can't stand to listen to this for another second. I step backwards, and then again, turning around and nearly stumbling on the stairs in my dumb rush to get out of there. The night's dark seeps into my bone, clouds up everything. My pulse is pounding in my head, my blood is racing, and I barely feel my legs as they move me forward and away. I forget stealth and I forget agility, and I just shut my ears to everything, even the sound of my own steps, and I pray that neither of them hear me.

I don't want to hear Tarrlok – so caring and hurt, even in his desperate outrage of protectiveness.

And I don't want to hear Amon – so human, so ordinary. Making promises. Being kind and cruel in the same sentence. Letting that deadbeat _speak_ to him like that and not instantly demolishing him with a single word, not humouring him and toying with him, but instead taking offence and getting frustrated and arguing back, just like anyone else might.

I always knew he was a man of flesh and blood, but never like this. Never on the same level as me.

_Spirits, I'm shaking._

It wouldn't have shocked or disturbed me more if I'd walked into that cell and caught them in each other's arms, at each other's lips. At least that would've made some kind of sense.

What's worse is knowing that I somehow got the drop on him too. Amon's supernatural sensitivity to movement, always so attuned to me, was blind tonight. I don't totally believe it yet, but I don't think he ever picked up that I was right there, that he never knew I heard so much and never knew I left. I could never have pulled off something like this a month ago, and I wouldn't have even considered it. Trying to sneak up on Amon is a fool's game – you lose before even starting out – but I won tonight. Like his concentration broke, only blessings from the spirits don't work that way.

I want to reject it, I can't reject it. I want him to trust me and tell me what's going on.

There were so many moments when I didn't know him tonight. And that's without going near what the two actually _said_ to each other and whatever it all meant, and how well they seem to know each other. How far they go back. How dearly Amon holds this prisoner – this corrupt politician, this scum of an ex-bloodbender, this embodiment of everything we've spent years fighting against together.

How many secrets he's keeping that I never guessed existed.

I don't know this man. I never did.

* * *

When the daylight comes back, I'm bolder. And I'm done with listening from the shadows.

The rally's set for later in the day, and the airbenders are getting their equalisation after all. Today's going to see a decisive victory for the revolution on all levels, we're promised. Amon leaves ahead to take care of the final preparations, and I can't ask him if anything's wrong or wish him luck – I never used to need flimsy words like that around him. He'd always know what I meant.

I can't ask at what hour he slept last night, either.

He wants as many of us there as we can manage, while Sato commands the next air-strike against the United Forces, so I take charge and mobilise as many of us as possible before setting my attention to clearing up any stragglers. It gives me all the excuse I need.

Before I catch my own ride to the mainland, I visit Tarrlok's cell one last time.

When I lift the panel and climb in, the sight of him actually shocks me. I've seen equalised prisoners throw pity-parties before now, I've even seen a breakdown or two and felt nothing, and I've known men and women to change and turn listless from the impact of losing their bending, but not like this.

He's grown thinner than I remember, and his face is shadowed and haggard, and scored with deep crags not so different from mine. His hair – so fucking frivolous once upon a time that it'd make me sick to look at – dangles in limp and matted clumps. His clothes, made from the finest silks imported from the Earth Kingdom if I remember right, hang tattered and baggy and filthy from his frame, looking ready for the scrapheap. All of him looks ready for the scrapheap, actually.

There's a sombre and grieving aura to him now too, one that strikes me as spooky in its familiarity.

Whoever the man who headed a task force against us was, and who posed and preened for publicity shots with his arm around the Avatar, he's gone now. It's tough to believe that this mess could be the same arrogant and strutting peacock-swan from just a few weeks ago, or that the hard line of his mouth could ever have twisted into that shit-eating grin I remember seeing leering from the front page of practically every newspaper. This man isn't him, and he isn't the same maniac who boasted about how powerful his bending was while twisting my insides apart either.

Tarrlok doesn't move or show surprise – doesn't react to my presence at all in fact, even though I've got to be the first human other than Amon he's seen since his bending was taken. He sits totally still on the cell floor, his gaze fixed on the attic door I just now emerged from, arms resting on drawn-up knees, and somehow reminds me in his stillness of Amon more than anyone I've ever seen. His eyes stare at me with cold blue fire.

"I was wondering when you'd show up," he says in a voice that doesn't betray any sign of shock or fear, and it looks like the fire hasn't totally gone out of him after all.

"Councilman." I hate to use his old title and status, but _bending scum_ hardly fits anymore, and the idea of calling him by his first name – like I know or respect him, like Amon did last night, it sticks in my throat and disgusts me. I flash my best toothy smile. "Remember me?"

He smiles right back at me, and it means nothing except dislike and challenge. "I do. So you were my replacement."

"Replacement?"

I never registered it last night, but his voice is different. It sounds deeper, now that oily metropolitan affect's been cast off. And there's an edge to his words I definitely don't like.

"What's your name?" The way he asks me that, it sounds so much like Amon, the first time. "I never found anything on your or your background in the days when I ran the task force. And believe me, I dug deep."

"It doesn't matter what my name is – it's none of your damn business, and it's too good a name for me to want you to be saying it." I snarl my total scorn, and try to cover how badly he caught me off-guard with that. "And trust me, that's not the kind of question you want to be wasting time asking me right now."

"Did he change his mind?" he asks tiredly, and almost afraid, fingers pressing to his forehead. "About the children?"

"Why? Worried about all the political promises you'll have broken if those kids lose their bending and four elements turn into three?"

He growls. "Did Amon change his mind?"

I toy with giving him the answer; I toy with not giving it. I even contemplate using it as a bargaining tool; only Tarrlok must know he'll get the answer eventually, when Amon visits next. And looking at him right now, so small and pathetic in that cell, and having to hear his _voice _address me so close, it works to make any pity I ever felt for him wither and die. It makes me remember who my enemy is, and who's really to blame here – _benders, always benders_ – and I consider walking out and leaving him hanging, knowing Amon's only gonna crush his hopes later.

Instead, I let loose the answer, slow and simple. "…No."

And it's so good to hear that small pained noise that comes out of him, halfway between a sigh and a hiss, and to savour all those small and suppressed emotions on his face as whatever hope or faith he had dies. Some part of me knows I should be better than this, but I've spent too long hating him and everyone like him to feel anything but satisfaction.

And right now, it's hard to not feel my own power as I stand over him and my shadow swallows him up. Whatever kind of burden he is to Amon, today he's small and weak. I have my weapons, and my strength, and my health, while he has nothing. It'd be just too easy, and the urge to open up those bars and walk in, and erase this one detail that never added up, is so intense that it nearly frightens me. So this is how it feels, huh. But I remember discipline, and I remember loyalty, and I remember Amon. I remember his voice last night, straining towards warmth like he didn't know what it felt like any more.

"Amon isn't the one who sent me." I say, deep with warning. I will him to get my implication.

He does. There's no reaction, no obvious fear, but when he answers, it's too slow and too calm. Too relieved. "No, I didn't think so. He would never have allowed it."

He stands up stiffly, and steps closer to the bars – close enough for me to see the dead resignation in his eyes.

"Have you come to kill me?"

_Spirits, I want to_. If something so simple could end this, then I would do it without a second thought.

I answer by drawing my kali sticks and inclining one towards him, watching their blue charge crackle the air dangerously.

"Haven't decided yet." I smile and level one at him, and part of me wants him to give me an excuse. "I guess it all depends on you."

Instead of stepping away, Tarrlok surges forward faster than I thought he'd be capable of in his state, and he grips the cell's metal bars with both hands and presses his face in the gap between them, like a captive animal baring its fangs to tourists. His eyes are wild and bright, and they dare the part of me that wants. They dare me to do it.

"You'd be doing us both a favour." He spits through gritted teeth, and somehow I get the feeling that I'm not one of the _both_ he's talking about.

I chuckle and bring my sticks almost within an arm's reach of the bars. "I don't remember owing you any favours."

So close, blue spikes of electrical energy are reaching out for their natural conductor. The harsh light must make both our faces look deranged. Then I step back smoothly and sheath the sticks again in my backpack generator.

"How about this: I'll consider your request if you tell me everything I want to know."

He actually looks disappointed, like he sees through my bluff. He steps backwards until his back hits the cell wall and then lets himself sink to a sitting position on the floor again, all that manic energy drained away. His eyes stay on me, and I know he's mulling something over.

"And what's that?"

"I want you to tell me how you know Amon."

He holds my gaze firm, and his words are even firmer. "I'm his prisoner."

"Come on; what do you take me for?" I watch him as he watches me, as he takes in all that I know. "You're a lot more than that."

"You're asking me to sell him out?"

"You're saying you don't want to?"

"I don't," he says, quiet and resolved. "Not to you."

I advance, and I demand. "How do you know him?"

"How do you think?"

If Tarrlok showing some twisted loyalty to Amon wasn't bad enough, then Tarrlok actually trying to protect him and deflect my attention is the worst sign of all. This is a secret, and Tarrlok is the one to hold Amon's complete trust. That's when his dumb taunt frays what's left of my temper, and I lose it. I want to tear him apart.

"You think you can play games with me like you do with Amon? You think that just because he doesn't want to hurt you that means I won't?"

_That_ gets his attention, all right. I can hear the breath leave him in a sick gasp. "You've heard us."

"Yeah, I heard enough. And I want to know what you did to him. What you are to him."

"I'm nothing to him," he snaps with cold finality. "Right now, what he needs is you – his Equalists. He needs Amon."

"That's not an answer. And I _believe_ in him. So you're going to tell me what the fuck Amon has ever had to do with someone like you! Why he's different now! How you changed him!"

My rage runs itself into knots that I have to struggle to unwind when I collect myself again. And I see a look of pure malice glittering in Tarrlok's eyes, like he could tell me things that could make me hurt and make him die, just like he wants. But something in him seems to stamp that feeling out, and the look fades quickly.

"Get out," he says, voice low and grave.

"What?"

"You need to go. You need to leave this whole thing." His face clouds with misery and he wraps his arms around himself. "And for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

_I can't believe this._ "You're sorry?"

"I'm sorry…for what I did to you the last time we met. And I'm sorry for what's going to happen."

"I don't accept anything of yours, apologies included. And what do you think is going to happen?"

"He'll abandon you. It's what he does." He laughs for a second, a broken sound, and shakes his head. "I don't even think he can help it."

I make a noise of disgust. "I don't have time for nonsense. You're crazy if you think that this means anything to me, or that I believe you."

"Then you've wasted enough time already. I'm not going to tell you anything."

It burns, but I can see that he's telling the truth, as much as he knows it – no matter what I threaten or what threats I might carry out, I'm really believing that he won't say a thing. That's how deep this runs. I've taken a wasted risk to achieve nothing, and I can't afford to give more time to working this man over. I need to head out on the last flight to the rally before anyone starts wondering where I am. Today, I've lost.

"This isn't over," I warn him.

Tarrlok makes no reply, has no clever little quip to answer or bait me with this time, so I turn around and make my way to the stairs. I don't know how I'm going to handle things if Tarrlok tells Amon I was here – I figured that whatever Tarrlok said to me would equip me well enough to handle that outcome – but somehow, from studying his words and his looks, something tells me that he doesn't plan on saying a word.

I just wish I knew why.

Before I close the wooden panel above my head and walk away, I hear a few final words.

"Don't confront him. No matter what happens, don't ever confront him."

* * *

At first, the Avatar's words sound like nonsense to me, like the most ridiculous lies she could invent. I don't know why Amon is even dignifying her with the right to go on speaking, much less a response.

And then she says it –

"_And his brother is Councilman Tarrlok!"_

– and it all falls into place so smoothly and so terrifyingly that I flinch from the impact.

The unnecessary capture. The solitary cell. The details he shouldn't have known, but did. How we were all kept away from him, forbidden to speak to him.

Amon prioritising. Bringing food. Paying visits. Giving special treatment.

The argument. And the _affection_ – choked and smothered and insane, but still there.

It's hideous, it's too hideous to be real, it can't be true. It could all be a coincidence; it could all mean something else – anything else. But even as I panic and deny and look for something to nail my faith to, I know that I'm believing it.

There's a storm brewing inside me, and I don't feel any better when Amon unmasks for the first time in my memory, to prove the Avatar's lies. The action confuses the Avatar, sure enough, but for me it confirms that sick twisting in my belly more and more. That Amon would expose himself and lay his greatest vulnerability bare before a huge crowd and his enemies doesn't fit. And I may not know him at all, but I know this. He would never do this.

Unless his scars are just another mask to hide behind.

I spent so many hard years longing to know those scars at last, but when the mask is pulled free, I'm the only one who looks away.

* * *

Chaos breaks and Amon pursues Avatar Korra with a vengeance – and again, he's more angry and distracted than he should be, like she struck a raw nerve. And if I didn't understand the things I do now then I'd be worried for him, because his composure's been shattered like glass – glass that's only being held together in splinters by a frame. Another blast and the pieces will all fly free, I know it.

And that's enough.

I follow him, even though I should be controlling the crowd and fighting to subdue the freed airbenders.

I follow, knowing in the pit of me that I'm going to see something I shouldn't, all the while praying that I won't.

I confront him.

* * *

"_You traitor! I dedicated my life to you!"_

"_You served me well, Lieutenant."_

In the end, I'm the one who shatters into pieces and flies free.

The agony is so familiar and overwhelming that I can't understand how I could've forgotten even for a second what Tarrlok did to me. But as my body lifts and wrenches unnaturally and my frame can't hold together the breaking inside me, I know it's worse this time, much worse. If Tarrlok's grip was blunt force, then Amon's is as sharp and precise as a blade. This time, it doesn't just bear down on me; it spreads itself inside me, it crawls everywhere, until there's no place left for me anymore. He holds all the strands of my veins, every drop of blood, and then pulls them apart. The only water he leaves to me are my tears. The only sense he leaves me with is of betrayal. Tears and betrayal and _nothing_, all returned to me.

And it's all for a lie – a lie I believed without question, without hesitation, my doubts all replaced by awe and hope because he gave me something to believe in. And now that the lie's been unravelled, it seems so stupid, so naïve, so obvious. Benders never believed it for a second. How did we believe and trust, even after lifetimes of exploitation? How did we never think to ask him for more proof of his claims? How did we never chase down another explanation for what he could do?

Because we wanted to believe. I wanted to believe.

I wanted – so much.

Amon is dead. Amon never existed to begin with. This man gave me vision and purpose, and I can't even remember his real name, the one the Avatar gave so easily minutes ago.

The worst part of this pain is understanding near the end why this is happening. Why, after so many years of careful lies and masterful performances, after painstakingly maintaining this façade despite everything, Amon would throw aside every caution and every safeguard right now, on the verge of having it all. Why he wants to tear it down with his own hands.

Why he'll dispose of the Equalists and our cause with no remorse, why he'll abandon us all without ever looking back.

"_My brothers and sisters..."_

This is what I've been standing in for all along. What all of us have been standing in for – always. And now Amon has the real thing back.

That cell. That man. The longing in his voice.

His brother, his brother, his brother.


End file.
